Originally posted by midnight Target
Star Trek replicators?
Not quite.
but darn close.
Rapid prototyping (the FDM they mentioned) has been around for several years at least. I looked at it briefly while I was in a master's program for industrial engineering back in 1997-1998. At the time, the FDM was used almost solely for non-functional prototypes, mostly because it would extrude one material at a time, and the final product was pretty fragile so it wouldn't make good for a mechanical part. One thesis done while I was there was looking at ceramic rapid prototyping technologies to cast parts for a dashboard of a car (can't remember the model, sorry.) The parts however, couldn't be made to specs of the original part, so the functionality of the experiment was a "failure" but it provided good research on the issue. I left the master's program and didn't really follow it anymore, so I'm not sure what improvements were made between then and what the article talks about.
The technology is really in its infancy, and I wouldn't expect any working blenders, cellphones or TV remotes from this process for quite some time.
Still, it's a logical step from what I was seeing 5-6 years ago.
